Hello, and welcome to our fresh recap of news and events that happened within the ICON ecosystem. As always, we have a lot to share, so let’s have a quick overview of what was up in the project over the past two weeks! First and foremost, Shinhan Bank, Korea’s second-largest commercial bank, issues KYC compliance certificates through its mobile app Zzeung, which uses ICONLOOP’s blockchain-based decentralized identity (DID) technology. Once issued, the KYC compliance certificate can be used to open accounts with financial institutions and services, bypassing redundant KYC compliance processes. This case is the first commercialization of DID service for the financial sector in Korea.
Another significant milestone for ICON, Jeju, a southern island in South Korea that has about 15 million visitors annually, now requires those visitors to use a decentralized identity (DID) blockchain technology based app that claims to offer private, secure COVID-19 contact tracing. Now visitors will be required to download the Zzeung mobile app when arriving on the Island and verify their identity using a Korean telecom service. A verifiable credential at the backend will be issued via a public blockchain network to guarantee that there is no forgery or tampering of any information.
As for the key network and ecosystem highlights, the recent ICON Newsletter states the following: 57.5% of the circulating supply is staked vs. 38.4% at the end of 2019.; less than 240 million of ICX available in the market, which the lowest amount ever — thus far, we’ve mentioned the lowest amount in our previous update, and now it’s another record! Real circulating supply continues to decrease to record lows. One P-Rep self-delegated almost 10 MILLION ICX. 4 P-reps teams (ICONVIET, ICONDAO, iBriz-ICONOsphere, and Everstake) are competing to build ICON’s Contribution Proposal System. An ongoing ICON Hyperhack gains 272 participants.
Apart from the mentioned above, over the past weekend, the ICON network experienced an attack by a malicious individual exploiting a vulnerability in the Multiple Unstaking Requests feature. Along with the help of dedicated community members and P-Reps, the ICON Team identified that the account was attacking the ICON Network using the ‘SetDelegate’ function to mint unauthorized ICX tokens. Now everything is fixed — check the post-mortem for more details.
Next, Blockdevs, a group of blockchain developers who operate as a decentralized organization, announced they were working on a project called “ICONPOOL”. It is an automated liquidity provider on ICON, which is set to launch in October.
The Magic SDK, a popular passwordless authentication and private key management service in the Ethereum ecosystem, was integrated into the ICON public blockchain. Also, FutureICX, a multi-grant winning decentralized prediction market built on ICON Network, has completed the integration of their BandChain customized oracle script and the migration to BandChain Proof-of-Authority Mainnet.
ICON continues to support the community, teams, and operational entities. Several grants were approved, and grant reports were issued — feel free to check them out in our update. Besides, even though real-life events are currently a rare case, ICON Africa held an offline meetup to foster awareness about the project in their local region and actively engage the African community to search out talents that can positively contribute to ICON.
Stay tuned with updates and don’t forget to participate in Citadel’s 500 ICX contest! That’s all for today — see You in two weeks!
Development
In this edition of ICON Weekly, Brian Li takes a look at the IRC-3 and IRC-16 token standards and ICON’s recent mainnet update.
Also read, ICON Weekly #4 — COVID-19 Contact Tracing with Zzeung and MyID on Jeju Island, where he gets into why Zzeung app is a big deal for both ICON and the blockchain industry as a whole.
Over the weekend, the ICON network experienced an attack by a malicious individual exploiting a vulnerability in the Multiple Unstaking Requests feature. The ICON Team, along with the help of dedicated community members and P-Reps, identified that the account was attacking the ICON Network using the ‘SetDelegate’ function to mint unauthorized ICX tokens. Realizing the potential severity of the situation, they quickly gathered all Main P-Reps to remain on standby for an emergency network update to remove the ‘SetDelegate’ function and blacklist the attacker’s accounts while they explored the root vulnerability the attacker was abusing. Exchanges were notified with specific accounts to freeze and to disable deposits and withdrawals while the patch was being developed. The network was then upgraded and the attacker was permanently stopped.
‘Blockchain Analytics and Data Pipelines’ project has released its first beta version of ICON-ETL w the basic blockchain data exporters providing blocks, transactions, and transaction-related information. See full Community Grant Progress Report #2 via the link above.
Bridge is the latest incubator project focused on growing the addressable market for blockchain-based applications. With Block42 and PARROT9 assisting with development, ICX Station will utilize SDKs from both Magic (formerly Fortmatic) and a banking partner to create a seamless user experience when non-crypto users interact with ICON applications. Bridge will offer an SDK to ICON developers for simple integration of the Bridge widget into their application. The mission of Bridge is simple: remove all friction when using blockchain apps. When consumers are using applications built on ICON, Bridge will hide everything and anything associated with blockchain technology. To the end user, all they will know is that they created an account using an email address and deposited some money into their account.
‘Tipicon dApp Integration’ project by PICONBELLO has DAOlottery near-ready for mainnet. Tipicon is now averaging ~40,000 txn daily for the ICON public network.
Since they are almost ready for mainnet for DAOlottery and most of the DAOlevels is completed, they believe that they are 45% completed with the project.
Want to learn about NFT IDOL Token? Get started with the OpenDevICON, platform for new developers to the ICON ecosystem. Also find on Gitbook.
Also read more on their recent grant approval via this link.
Awareness and social encounters
- Crypto Wendy O’s interview with Hayder Hassan
They speak on MMA, EVERYTHING crypto and his very own thoughts on ICON.
Just to name few of them (read the full article for more):
- “There is no secret partnership between PASS and MyID. At this time, PASS is simply a driver’s license replacement. ICONLOOP’s MyID is much, much more. MyID is designed to be an overarching and high-grade identity product — it’s the only DID that’s approved by Korea’s FSC. If I understand correctly, MyID will allow a user to combine multiple separate identification methods, PASS-included, into a single all-in-one solution. With this in mind, having PASS as an identification method that can be added in MyID makes perfect sense. After all, it’s just a driver’s license replacement.”
- “PASS is not some public marketing front for MyID. It’s a completely separate product managed by the country’s top telecommunications companies. The telecom giants are involved because the service ties a single driver’s license to a single smartphone and phone number. The only entities that possess the necessary data and regulatory pull to make something like PASS happen are telecom giants.”
Corey C-ICONSENSUS spoke with P-Rep Founder & his teammate Nblaze (ICON-Midos) and Paul, the CPO and and Co-Founder of BandChain. They’re eager to share that they’re in partnership to promote and perpetuate the expansion of two great ecosystems! They discussed the intricacies of the Band Protocol, the BandChain team, what motivated BandChain to build within the ICON Ecosystem and specifically, the motivating factors of BandChain implementing their oracle solutions into the FutureICX Ecosystem. FutureICX is a gamified trading platform that enables users to place predictions on the ICX price while simultaneously, players can earn dividends as a passive means of income in the process of doing so. They discuss the future plans of FutureICX, why FutureICX chose BandChain for reliable and secure price-data feeds and they also discussed Nblaze’s plans for the future expansion of FutureICX.
The ICON Africa team continued its effort to foster awareness about the project in Africa and actively engage the African community to search out talents that will contribute positively to ICON.
ICON network’s focus has been on DeFi for the past month. Not only was the integration with Band Protocol announced, but also Balanced will be the first DeFi project on the ICON network to integrate with Band as its oracle solution. ICON has released a new update to its mainnet and the Euljiro, Yeouido, and Pagoda testnets. Take a deeper look at what has been happening around the project with the article above.
ICON is in the midst of a breakout in social activity w/ 38,228 total monthly social mentions, an increase of 24.8%.
- MyID Alliance Newsletter (for partners)
- Min Kim thoughts on the launch of ‘Shinhan KYC Authentication’ via Zzeung app
Upcoming events
- 29th August, 2020 — RHIZOME AMA in the Crypto Vigilante Network telegram channel
Finance
- Key network stats
Key Highlights:
- 57.5% of the circulating supply is staked vs. 38.4% at the end of 2019. The upward trend continues and we believe it shows long term confidence in ICX.
- Less than 240 million of ICX available in the market, the lowest amount ever NEW RECORD AGAIN!!! Real circulating supply continues to decrease to record lows.
- One P-Rep almost self-delegated almost 10 MILLION ICX
- 4 P-reps teams (ICONVIET, ICONDAO, iBriz-ICONOsphere, and Everstake) are competing to build ICON’s Contribution Proposal System.
- ICON updates IRC-16 Security Token Standards.
- MYID Alliance adds 5 new members including one of the largest banks in Korea.
- ICON Hyperhack gains 272 participants.
Blockdevs — a group of blockchain developers who operate as a decentralized organization — announced they were working on a project called “ICONPOOL”. It is an automated liquidity provider on ICON, that is set to launch in October.
Read Why ICONPOOL could be a gamechanger for the ICON ecosystem
To the unitiated, it may not be entirely clear what this means or why it’s important. But as this article will explain, this project is critically helpful in the long-term growth of the ICON ecosystem. Learn more via the link above.
Also check ICON in Numbers #8 (week 33–2020)
Roadmap
- According to the recent Roadmap Update from 31st July:
[Loopchain]
- DB Integrations — Integrating block and state database for better management and fault-tolerance.
- P2P network enhancement — Enhancing the performance of underlying P2P network platform.
- LFT 2.0 — Enhancing the concensus algorithm for more liveness.
[Interchain — BTP Enable use of DApps on heterogeneous blockchain]
- Interchain PoC for ICON-Public Chain — DApp on heterogeneous chain can be used from ICON wallet, and vice versa
- Interchain service launch with business partner — DApp service that operates on heterogeneous blockchain is released
- Interchain SDK for public chain — Interchain SDK is used for developers to generate various interchain DApps
- Interchain SDK for private chain — Interchain SDK is used for developers to generate various interchain DApps
- C-Rep features with BTP — C-Rep is responsible to bridge between heterogeneous blockchains
[Sidechain — A new layer of the ICON Network to support a reliable smart-contract environment]
- Sidechain — Smart-contract purpose sidechain will be connected with ICON Network using BTP Technology
[Parallel Processing — Scalability solution for TPS Enhancement based on parallel processing]
- Parallel processing with manual decorator — Parallel processing raises TPS sharply with manual decorator on Python EE
- Parallel processing with automatic decorator — Parallel processing raises TPS sharply with automatic decorator on Python EE
[IISS — Measures the contribution of all Voters, P-Reps, DApps and EEPs]
- Incentive distribution function for C-Reps — C-Reps are rewarded with ICX
- Contribution Proposal System — Enables contributors to obtain funding for a project that benefits the ICON Network.
- IISS 3.0 — Add features to improve decentralized cryptoeconomy and governance stability
[Transaction Fee System — DApp provider and users can share commission and pay with Virtual Step]
- Virtual Step 2.1 — Virtual Step distribution to SCORE
[Services on ICON — Vault — Decentralized key management service]
- Launch Vault feature in ICONex Wallet — Decentralized key management feature is integrated in ICONex wallet
- Launch service with business partner — Vault feature is launched with business partner
[Services on ICON — DEX Trade heterogeneous tokens]
- DEX for trading between tokens on heterogeneous blockchain based on BTP — Token holders can trade tokens of heterogeneous blockchains with interchain protocol and DEX
[Services on ICON — Secret Vote — Enable secret vote environment in public blockchain]
- Secret vote smart contract — alpha version — Development of secret voting function in public blockchain
- Secret vote service launch with business partner — Launch of secret voting service with business partners on public blockchain
[Services on ICON — STO Provide platform for security token offering]
- STO smart contract — alpha version — Security tokens are generated on ICON smart contract
- Official STO platform launch as ICONest 2.0 — Users can generate security tokens using ICONest 2.0 equipped with GUI and legal guidance
Partnerships and team members
ICONLOOP, the South Korean blockchain technology company, today announced that Jeju Island, the country’s popular domestic tourist destination, will use its Decentralized Identity (‘DID’) blockchain technology to provide private, secure COVID-19 contact tracing to the island’s 15 million annual visitors. ICONLOOP and the Jeju Special Self-Governing Province have signed a cooperation agreement to introduce this innovative COVID-19 and infectious disease prevention system. Visitors will use a mobile app to check into tourist destinations and businesses on Jeju Island, with their data kept private unless a COVID-19 case is discovered.
Shinhan Bank announced that it has introduced a MyID-based distributed identification technology designated as an innovative financial service by the Financial Services Commission to Shinhan Sol (SOL). Decentralized ID (DID) technology is a system that allows users to select and submit personal information when they neccessary after encrypting and storing identification information on a smartphone. Shinhan Bank has replaced the non-face-to-face secondary identification process, which is identification through a DID service or identification through a telecommunication company.
The Magic SDK, a popular passwordless authentication and private key management service in the Ethereum ecosystem, was integrated into the ICON public blockchain. ICON has been collaborating with Magic to support various leading decentralized applications with passwordless authentication service, enabling an easier onboarding experience for dapp users. ICON’s extensive ecosystem combined with Magic’s easy onboarding solution will expedite the mass adoption of decentralized applications in DeFi, gaming, security tokens, NFTs, and more.
FutureICX, a multi-grant winning decentralized prediction market built on ICON Network, has completed the integration of their BandChain customized oracle script and the migration to BandChain Proof-of-Authority Mainnet. In recent months, both teams have been working to fine-tune the oracle parameters to test and iterate a secure and reliable price feed that is ready for the production environment and highly resistant to frontrunners or manipulation.
Stash is a rewards program for ICON.It enables a consumer to earn ICX when they shop online. Once they earn the ICX, they can then spend it using their Stash issued ICON debit card.
- Recent grantee Nebula’s Progress
Other
ICON P-Reps News
Top-10 P-reps
The freshest biweekly development update on Citadel P-Rep, come around and see what we made so far!
ICON Use Case — STIN
They are going to produce a limited edition gin of 999 bottles which are registered on the ICON blockchain. Learn more in the article:
- POS Bakerz (Stakin)
